Bio-inspired technologies: the key to our future and huge research opportunities

Title

Bio-inspired technologies: the key to our future and huge research opportunities

Speaker

Prof. Mingyi Liu (GTIIT, Mechanical Engineering and Robotics)

Host

Prof. Kai Huang (GTIIT, Chemistry)

Time and Location

Dec. 08, 2022, Thursday, 11:00am-12:00pm (China Time), E310 (Education Building, 3rd floor)

Language

English

Abstract

The total number of people on our planet has just surpassed 8 billion. Energy shortage, global warming, natural disasters, pandemic, and pollution are just a few of the problems we are facing today. Looking into biology, we are not surprised to find that it is stable, healthy, efficient, and sustainable.

Bio-inspired technology or biomimicry looks for inspiration from the biology world and tries to catch or even surpass biological performances. The early and most successful examples include airplane, radar, Velcro tape, waterproof clothes, ant colony algorithm, and artificial neural network, among others. Those inventions have changed the way we live, and no doubt make our lives much better. Biology can offer us inspiration to solve the problems we encounter on our planet. In this guest lecture, I will systematically review bio-inspired technology and the biology world. I will explain the principles underlying the phenomena we see in the biology world. Last but more importantly, I will introduce the problems in the biology world and try my best to guide you to think about the world we live in. The final goal of bio-inspired research is to understand the underlying principles and eventually, design systems that are better than the biology world itself. There is still a long way to go, but the results so far are inspiring.

In the meantime, I will also introduce some of the work my lab (the Bio-inspired Mechatronics Lab) is doing and see if there is interest in my research.

This is the first lecture I had in my Ph.D. study, and I found it opens my mind. I hope you can benefit from this lecture too. Looking forward to meeting you in the class.

Biography

Dr. Mingyi Liu received his B.S. from Nanchang Hangkong University in 2011; M.S. of Precision Instruments from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Beihang University) in 2014; Ph.D. of Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2020, under the supervision of Prof. Lei Zuo and Prof. Robin Queen, with a focus on biomechanical energy harvesting. After two years of postdoctoral training at Virginia Tech, he joined the Mechanical Engineering department of GTIIT as an Associate Professor in 2022. His research interest includes energy harvesting and renewable energy, robotics, mechatronics, wearable devices, dynamics/control. He has published more than 20 papers, most of which are in leading journals such as Applied Energy, Renewable Energy, Mechanical System and Signal Processing, Smart Materials and Structures, etc. He has won numerous awards, including R&D 100 Nomination Award, Chinese Scholar Council Award (Full Scholarship to Study Abroad), Bio-build fellowship, etc. He also gave presentations at multiple conferences and won several poster awards and a travel award. He serves as reviewer for a dozen of journals, including Mechatronics, Energies, Applied Physics LETTER, Sensors and Actuators, Smart Materials and Structures, etc.